“You fired your weapon in a crowd, and you used another hunter’s line. Is that something a licensed bounty hunter does?” Slak spoke his sentence quickly, while on the move. He then doubled back down the aisle when he finished. His pursuer may have a great set of eyes, but when it came to ears, he was down a few notches on the rating stick!

“I’m not licensed, but I know how to find people. And that’s why they hired me.”

Slak found a small coin in his pocket and flicked it to the far end of the room. It was larger than he originally thought- the crates had given the impression of a wall, but it fell much farther.

“I’m getting bored of this, Daggart. When are you going to give yourself up?”

“When I think life isn’t worth living any more.”

“You should have thought of that before getting into debt with the Meatlumps.”

Slak heard the Aqualish’s boot take a step- it was working! He moved quietly towards a corner of the room to the creature’s right, ready to move back as soon as he spoke. “I can’t be that valuable to them, if they send an unlicensed hunter after me who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“I know what I’m doing!” the hunter rasped, his mandibles scraping each other angrily. “Once I bring you in, I’ll get better jobs, save up, and get a license on my own!”

Slak tiptoed to a different part of the storeroom. That stubborn wanna-be hunter was fairly easy to rattle, but he knew enough to stay by the blasted door! If only he had a blaster now...but it was no use hoping for something he didn’t have and couldn’t get.

Time to make another move!

He tried to push a crate. The first two were solid and immovable. But the third...

A good shove, and it went down with a solid crash of delicate glass breaking!

The Aqualish yelled and fired! There was the sound of heavy footsteps stomping up the stairway. Slak smiled. The newbie bounty hunter was about to get a very real beating from Grell the bouncer, or someone just as dangerous!

As if on cue, a huge hamhand reached out from beyond the doorway and slapped onto the Aqualish’s shoulder. He responded by chittering angrily and pointing in Slak’s general direction.

Slak waited for just a few more seconds, then when the opening was wide enough he tore through the open space of the doorway behind the large bouncer and flew down the stairs four at a time.

Past the Swoopers at their table and their now-resumed game, only one or two noticed him this time. Out the door, which was now unguarded, into the street and out into the night again, free for at least the moment, running down the sidewalk and dodging more people. Into an alleyway, then, to one of his more favorite hiding places, behind a nearby restaurant and beside a dumpster, hoping that after a few minutes...

“Slak?”

He was rewarded. Dexter stood over him, a large Ojomite with a huge chin and an orange, reptilian face, wearing a white cook’s apron and holding a bucket in one of his four arms. “What kind of trouble are you in now, kid?” he said as he opened the dumpster with his top two hands and poured in the bucket’s contents with the bottom pair.

“Who said I’m in trouble?” Slak said, holding his knees and trying to look pitiful.

Dexter dropped the bucket onto the ground with a loud clang, and started counting off on the three fingers of his very, very large and scaly hand. “One, you only come around lately when you have trouble, and you think I can get you out of it. Two, I’ve got big ears. You made a stupid bet with a high-level member of the Meatlump gang, bunch of losers who blow up people and things that get in their way. Worse,” Dexter said, stepping back and closing the dumpster, “you made that bet in front of a large number of people, which made it necessary for said group to make an example of you if you didn’t pay up. And last I heard, you had some clumsy bugface who thinks he’s a bounty hunter chasing you through the Blue sector with a pistol, an attitude, and not much else. Am I warm yet?”

“Red hot as usual,” Slak grumbled. “You got any leftovers? I’m hungry.”

“You’re thinking about food? Now? When gangers and a blaster-toting idiot want you dead?”

“You forgot about the bouncer who’s after me at the swooper bar for busting a crate of glasses.”

Dexter paused, then threw up his hands and rolled his large eyes. “Get into the kitchen, and I’ll find you something. But be quiet as a dirt flea, or I’ll toss you out and yell your name so loud everyone in the sector who has a grudge against you will hear me. You hear me?”

Dexter looked up, nodded and smiled.

#

Five minutes later, Slak was halfway finished his meal of sliders and protato wedges when the display caught his eye.

At first he thought it was a holovid show, the kind he liked best with starship battles and laser fights between brave Imperial soldiers and traitorous Jedi Knights bent on destroying the Republic. But the fight onscreen only lasted a few seconds. After the troopers used their superior teamwork to defeat the silly looking Jedi and his overgrown, glowing toothpick, the action shifted. One of the soldiers took off his helmet while the rest fired their weapons at their prisoner off-camera.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I started off just like you,” said the handsome, dark-haired trooper as the other soldiers’ killing red blasts lit up his face from behind. Suddenly the picture shifted- the handsome young soldier was poorly dressed and scraggle-haired, walking slowly down a dirty street in the Blue sector, looking in vain at storefront windows with ‘Not Hiring’ written in large letters on it. “I didn’t have any prospects in life other than a bunch of dead end jobs. I’d made a bunch of bad choices, and I was up to my neck in debt. But then...”

Suddenly, a huge sunburst grew up behind the homeless, scraggly youth. His hair shortened, his posture improved, and his ragged clothes became a trim, imperial soldier’s white armor. “I enlisted in the Imperial Navy! I started as a stormtrooper, but now, since I passed a number of tests,” the white armor became a black helmet and dark body-glove flight suit, the background now a sleek looking flight hangar deck “I’m training to be a pilot! I’ll fly everything from TIE fighters to Imperial bombers! My bad choices? Erased from my permanent records! My debts? Erased by the signing bonus! I get to travel far, far away from my planet of origin, see the galaxy, and bring order to the planets in the Republic. And all because I put my thumb right...”

“SLAK!”

Dexter’s guttural voice snapped him back to reality. Slak had gotten out of his seat and was standing in front of the 2-D display on the large datapad that had been hung on the wall.

“What?” Slak said. “Am I breaking a law or something?”

“Only the ones against doing anything stupid. What’re looking at that ad so closely for, Slak?”

Slak turned back to face the screen. The dashing, dark haired recruit now wore an incredibly cool looking pilot’s helmet, the starlight reflecting just enough off of the black armor to make him look even more impressive.

More impressive to Slak were the two smiling, shapely women wearing femtrooper armor that flanked the new imperial pilot, a blonde under his right arm and a brunette under his left.

“Don’t delay,” said the blonde.

“Enlist today!” said the brunette.

Both leaned in to give the new pilot a kiss on the cheek, and then all three leaned forward to give a ‘thumbs up’ sign. “ADVENTURE IS UNIVERSAL!” proclaimed the caption beneath the smiling, handsome young people, “Enlist now, depart now, and receive a one-thousand credit bonus!” A flashing arrow extended from the last word and ended at a flashing red circle the size of a thumbprint.

“Slak,” said Dexter, “I can’t stay here to talk you out of this. I’ve got a business to run.”

“So go run it. I’m not stopping you.”

“Salk, they made me hang that holo-ad-player in here. You understand? Any outfit that makes you hang their ad can’t be that great a thing to buy into. I...Slak, listen! I used to give...well, in a different part of my life I sold...I sold stuff to guys like that. Slak, that’s not a life for you. Maybe once it woulda been good. Heck, once it was good. But the last few years, it hasn’t been. ”

Slak turned back to look at the blonde ‘stormtrooper,’ who was now talking nonstop about the benefits of being a pilot in the Imperial Navy. As Slak listened, he began picking out words and phrases that made him chuckle. On the surface, she was talking about how great life was as a pilot in the Navy. But someone Slak’s age would ‘get’ the double-entendres she kept using when she described how much bigger, longer and more satisfying a pilot’s life was than the average soldier, or the excellent level of training that they gave even to the new recruits who’d never held a flight stick in their life... “Tee Hee Hee!” the blonde giggled at her own joke.

Slak loved this ad! Well, he loved the blonde more than the ad, but...

“Dexter,” Slak said, “I really think that...”

Dexter had gone. He was back at the grill, making another round of orders for a clientele that had gotten increasingly impatient for their food.

Slak looked for a moment, distracted by his own reflection in Dexter’s plate-glass window. He was young- old enough to where he could have finished SecSchool this year...nearly eighteen orbits old.

Eighteen. And no prospects whatsoever. Even if he paid off the Meatlump gang, then what? Eventually, he’d get in debt to some other gang. Get some other bounty hunter mad at him...one that could shoot straight this time. Maybe he’d get a job for someone like Dexter, working as a busboy in a restaurant...what other skills did he have?

None.

Now the brunette had stepped forward, doing a gyrating dance to a throbbing synth drumbeat while singing the praises of her TIE fighter pilot boyfriend.

That did it.

He stuck his thumb on the red circle, which actually got larger as he got closer to it.

The screen lit up with fireworks, and pictures of even more pretty girls in stormtrooper armor and a squadron of perfectly in-formation TIE bombers flying towards the screen.

“CONGRATULATIONS, CADET!” yelled both the blonde and the brunette while the dashing young pilot looked on approvingly. “Yes, Congratulations!” the pilot said, his smile widening, Y”ou made the right choice! We’ve taken your thumbprint, DNA and retina scan simultaneously, and are now tracking you via satellite. An Imperial recruitment droid has been dispatched to find you at your current location. You’ve chosen the ‘Leave Immediately’ option, so enjoy your credits, say those goodbyes, but don’t leave the planet! You’re the Emperor’s property now, and going off world before the recruitment droid finds you is a crime of desertion, punishable by summary execution!”

“Deserters, ewwwww!” said both girls as a ragged looking man in broken armor was dragged away onscreen behind them, through a doorway where a number of blaster flashes sounded as...well, Slak was an intelligent fellow. He could guess what had happened. No way would he desert! Not if it meant disappointing ladies like that!

“Hey, Dexter! I’m gonna be a pilot!” Slak yelled.

“That so?” said Dexter, still cooking with two of his arms, wiping his brow with a third while he put yet another order up for the serving droid.

“Yup! And that meal you just gave me? Here:” he took out his mini datapad and paused as his fingers flew over the screen. “There!”

“Slak, “ Dexter yelled, looking at his own data pad set up near his workstation, “you should be paying off the Meatlumps! You just gave me a hundred credits for maybe five creds worth of food!” “The Meatlumps aren’t the kinds of guys you pay with online credit, Dexter! Besides, I wanted to give you a little something for the other meals you’ve given me on the house! You deserve it! Start saving for a spot back where you used to work on Coruscant!”

“You just proved something to me, Slak,” Dexter yelled from the kitchen as the hovering serving droids picked up another order. “Something my sire used to tell me all the time. It’s a big, big universe, and the only constant found everywhere and anywhere is that young people are stupid. You’re stupid, Slak, but you’ve got a good heart. Oh, and Slak? Before you spend your credits?”

Slak, looking ten kinds of superior, stuck his chin out at the big Besalisk. “Yeah, what?”

“I’d get running again if I were you. It looks like you’ve got company.” Dexter was pointing at the front door with his top right hand.

#

TO BE CONTINUED...